It’s that time of year again – awards time.
Scrolling through my newsfeed this week and I’ve seen a number of agents and business professionals posting of their nominations for “Agent of the Year” or “Business of the Year” or “something of the Year”.
The truth is, it’s great to see recognition when it comes to business, because I know just how hard all of us work. And we deserve to be recognised.
We don’t get to where we are by sitting around, giving bad service and just being crap at what we do. So the reality is that if a business, business owner or industry professional is recognised as a high achiever through an award process, then it’s typically warranted in some respect.
But for me, I’ll never win the award.
Why?
Because I don’t enter.
I’ve been nominated for a few awards over the years, but I’ve never followed through with the submission.
Back in the early days of my career it made sense to put myself forth for industry awards and recognition and I remember a time in 2005 when I was nominated for a local business award.
My real estate agency had been operating for just over a year and seemingly we were kicking some goals at the time and one of our clients had nominated us.
I was super excited and after going through the rigorous application process and then the interview process which consumed an incredible amount of my time, (not to mention was very stressful), I was silently disappointed to be sitting at the awards dinner to hear someone else’s name called.
Yes I was disappointed, but at the end of the day, I reminded myself that not winning was not a sign that I was bad in business.
It just meant that someone had ticked more boxes than me on the day and the judging panel had a job to do.
Were they a better business owner than me? Maybe. More committed? Possibly. Had better results than me? Who knows.
But at the end of the day, did it really matter?
Yes, awards equal credibility, but it’s results that speak volumes.
And so I made a decision to forget about awards and just focus on getting the results.
And by results I mean things like, closing a deal and knowing I’ve done everything I can for the client to put them in the strongest possible position; or having a client write a raving review that shows just how much I helped them. This is what really matters.
For me, the award is the testimonial.
And the testimonial is the client’s judgement, not a panel of people who have never used my service or worked with me directly.
This is why I focus on results and not industry awards.
I had invested so much time to trying to win that award back in 2005 and a large chunk of my focus had switched from the business at hand to winning the award that when I looked back on it all, I wasn’t actually doing myself any favours; or my clients for that matter.
I was distracted.
Even if I had won the award, what would it even mean?
The bottom line – my attention wasn’t with winning for my clients, but focussed on the big fat carrot dangled in front of me with a First Place Certificate attached to it and yes, I fell for it.
I loved winning Student of the Week back in my school days so to win an industry award was something next level!
Honestly, my ego likes the idea of being awarded Buyer’s Agent of the Year, but the truth is, I just don’t have the time to apply and I don’t place a high value on the award.
Clients choose me because they see I’m the right fit for them and they feel I’m the best person for the job.
I’ve NEVER had a potential client ask me why I don’t have any industry awards to my name.
Plus I’m not a member of any of the industry bodies who run these things. Again, a decision I made to avoid the bureaucracy.
But for those who do value awards and are giving it a crack, then I wish you all the best.
Recognition in any respect is never a bad thing and it certainly reinforces credibility in the eyes of the customer. I understand this, and yes, perhaps I’m missing out on something here, but that’s ok. It’s just how I choose to roll.
For me, I’m going to focus on winning my own awards – client testimonials, and if your’e curious, you can check out some of my “awards” HERE.
